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By Karen Springen
Men's Health

When you need to see a doctor, you want an appointment a.s.a.p. Trouble is, your idea of "possible" is usually very different than the doc's idea: Nationwide the average American waits 21 days for an appointment, according to a report by Merritt Hawkins & Associates. Here's how to see your doctor sooner.

Book online. Typically 10 to 20 percent of patients cancel their appointments. To snag these last-minute open slots, try booking through (www.zocdoc.com), a free website and app that lists physicians by specialty in 15 big cities and gives patient reviews. ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi was inspired to start the company with neurologist Oliver Kharraz, M.D., after he ruptured his eardrum on a flight and couldn't find a doctor for 4 days.

Call during slow times. Typically phones are busiest when offices open and around noon, says Kharraz. Try mid-morning and mid-afternoon instead. (Click here to learn The Best Times to Buy Anything.) Try the newest doctor in a big group. "It depends on whether you really want to see a specific doctor or just want to be seen by anyone," says Kharraz. "If the latter is the case, you have a better chance with a doctor who just recently joined the group and may not be fully utilized yet."

Ask to be on a wait list. Not all doctors keep one, but it's worth a shot. "It's an overhead question on the doctor's end to maintain that," says Kharraz.

Be nice to nurses and receptionists. "Whenever you go into your doctor's office, talk to the receptionist. Talk to the nurses so you know everyone like that, so you have not just someone on the inside but everyone on the inside," says Perry Sexton, M.D., a family doctor in Encinitas, California. Then when you call, everyone knows who you are, and also remembers your health issues. If your doctor instantly remembers that you're a regular with a sore throat, he knows he can quickly take care of you. Find out more ways to score an earlier doctor's appointment by making sure you're a high priority patient.

Don't fib and fake an emergency. "You're taking these spots away from other people who may be seriously sick," says Kharraz. "And once they realize your condition isn't as you described, you may be seen last of all patients."

Think about whether you really need to see an M.D. Often a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant will do the trick, says Ari Levy, M.D., an internist at the University of Chicago.

Find a new doctor. "If you feel like you have a doctor you can't get in to see if you really need to, that raises the question about are you seeing the right physician, " says Levy. "It is about access to care." (Dermatologists are especially hard to schedule an appointment with, for a handy guide that will help you determine whether your bump, blemish, or mole is the big C, check out the slideshow: What Skin Cancer Looks Like.)

What's the most outrageous wait you've had to get in to see a doctor? Tell us on Facebook.

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Most people feel anxiety before a surgical procedure. They may have an even bigger reason to worry. A new report from the Center for Public Integrity suggests there may be unseen perils lurking in the surgery suite: the very instruments used in the operation may be contaminated with dangerous pathogens.

Although surgical tools are supposed to be cleaned and sterilized between operations, researchers have discovered that these devices can emerge from the cleaning process with bits of bone, blood and tissue from the previous operation, contaminants that can become reservoirs for some potentially lethal bacteria.

TODAY spoke with the author of the new report, Joe Eaton, an investigative reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that focuses on ethics and public service.

Q: Do we know how widespread this problem is and how often patients actually come down with these scary infections?

A: That’s the crux of the issue. We really don’t know how many people end up with infections from surgical instruments. Studies that have looked specifically at dirty devices have shown that there is definitely a problem. A study at the University of Michigan, for example, looked at 350 suction cups that had been cleaned and sterilized. They found that every one of them contained blood, bone, tissue, even rust. If the devices are dirty it’s not only gross but potentially dangerous, since there’s a potential for passing on infection.

Q: What’s the problem with cleaning these tools? Can’t the heat just be turned up higher to kill all the bugs?

A: As surgery has moved more and more to high-tech devices it’s become a bigger problem. They’re not built just out of metal and glass anymore. Some of these polymers can melt if you heat them to high so they need to actually be cleaned. They’re sent to the hospital basement and cleaned in some cases by poorly paid and poorly trained technicians whose last job might have been Burger King. Some of these people are being paid as little as $8.50 per hour.

Q: If the devices are still dirty even after the hospital follows the manufacturer’s instructions, what’s the solution?

A: I think the solution is probably two-fold. First the manufacturers need to be required to design devices that can be cleaned in real world environments. Second, hospitals need to be forced to make sure the devices are clean before they’re used on patients. One thing that might help there is to require more training for the people doing the cleaning.

Q: What about the FDA? Aren’t they supposed to make sure these devices are designed properly and are being safely used?

A: There’s a real problem with follow-up. When there was an outbreak in Houston that was traced to dirty arthroscopic shavers, the FDA mandated a safety review of the shavers. But they asked the manufacturers to do their own testing. When the manufacturers came back with tests showing that the devices were not clean that was the end of it. There was no follow-up. So nothing happened.

Q: Is there anything patients can do to protect themselves?

A: The only thing you can do is go to the best hospital you can. But you need to realize that even there something could happen.

Q: What do you hope happens as a result of your story?

A: This is an issue just coming to the forefront within the community. I hope the story pushes it onto a larger stage and that people who set policy realize it’s a very serious issue. Even when it comes to surgeons, many do not know what happens to the instruments they use and where they’ve been before they wind up in the surgery suite.

 Linda Carroll is a regular contributor to msnbc.com and TODAY.com. She is co-author of the new book "The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic.”

Courtesy of Linda Morgan

Linda Morgan, 56, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2005 and has participated in about 15 clinical trials. But experts say only one in 10 patients with Parkinson's ever voluteer for a trial so getting enough can be a slow process.

When Linda Morgan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in October 2005, her doctor told her that her symptoms weren’t bad and instructed her to come back in a year.

Sit around and wait -- for a year?! No thank you, thought Morgan, who felt like she needed to do something after getting the scary diagnosis. Just a month later, she enrolled in a clinical trial -- and since then, she's participated in about 15.

“To get the cure that we want one day or the better drugs and the better treatments and better information about Parkinson’s, we all need to do our part and participate in clinical trials,” said Morgan, a pharmacist who lives in Asheville, N.C.

Clinical trials are a required part of the regulatory process to prove that new therapies are safe and effective. While studies for heart disease and cancer treatments can fill up in 24 hours, recruiting volunteers for Parkinson’s trials is a much slower process, of about one recruit per study per location each month, said Deborah Brooks, co-founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Fewer than one in 10 Parkinson’s patients ever participates in a trial, Brooks said, citing data from the National Institutes of Health from 2003-2004. A 2006 Harris Poll commissioned by the Fox foundation found that while about 80 percent of Parkinson’s patients would be willing to join a study, many haven’t been told of opportunities or given access to study information, Brooks said. Many people simply don’t know how badly they’re needed.

Parkinson’s is a degenerative central nervous system disorder that results in movement problems like trembling and rigidity and affects an estimated 1 million Americans. While medications offer relief from symptoms, there are none yet that halt the progression of the disease.

Committed to the research process, Morgan is among the nearly 2,500 people who have created profiles with the Fox Trial Finder, an online tool that the Fox foundation launched in beta in July.

The finder, which uses state-of-the art technology to match study volunteers with research trial coordinators, aims to get people into clinical trials and observational studies faster to speed the development of new treatments and ultimately find a cure, Brooks said.

“This is an example of how technology can enable us to bring new strategies to address a long-standing problem,” Brooks said.

“Patients have an opportunity to be engaged in many ways in accelerating treatments and participating in clinical trials is one of the most important ways,” Brooks said. “Cures don’t come out of the sky. They can be part of it.”

The problem of not enough volunteers for trials isn't unique to patients with Parkinson's, said Kathryn G. Whitford, vice president of the American Parkinson Disease Association. Some don't understand the variety of trials available, such as nutritional studies and exercise trials and "some patients are hesitant to do it because they think it would be against the wishes of their physician," Whitford said. "Some physicians are very encouraging and some hesitate for patients to experiment with new therapies especially if they are doing well on their current regimes."

The finder has refined matching technology that directs volunteers to studies for which they are qualified. In a unique feature, Brooks said, volunteers can store profiles and are notified when studies that match their criteria become available, so they don’t have to keep checking back. Research trial coordinators use the site to look for qualified volunteers. The two sides can contact each other - the volunteers are anonymous at first - to express interest or ask questions.

“They’re accessing smart-match technology that’s pro-active but privacy-assured that eases the burden to them,” Brooks said of volunteers. “It’s easier for the two sides. We’re trying to speed, simplify and target these matches.”

While other websites list research trials and can be searched by say, location, Brooks said Fox finder is easier to navigate. “It’s a 2012 kind of user experience,” she said.

“We didn’t come at this to be competing with other things,” Brooks said. “We saw there was a real opportunity for improvements on usability and functionality.”

Whitford said the Fox finder, and the other trial-listing sites, are all comprehensive. But she said the finder “is a more sophisticated tool [and] a very valuable tool in helping people to find the trial that would best suit their particular needs."

Since creating her profile over the summer, Morgan, 56, said she’s been notified of one study, but it was one in which she had already enrolled. On a recent check of trials in her area, she said she was disappointed to see that most did not have trial coordinators attached to them.

“It has great potential,” said Morgan, also a volunteer research advocate for the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation. “It’s very exciting to have a matching active engine out there. You put the info in and it does the work for you.”

And, she reminds the Parkinson’s community that volunteers are so important to research.

“When you think about it, the only way new medications or new treatments are available is because somebody volunteered to test it,” Morgan said. “They have to have volunteers.”

Have you ever volunteered for a medical trial? Or would you? Tell us on Facebook.

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